Harper: Georgia lawmakers need backbone

The Georgia General Assembly convened Monday for the first of its 40 days. It’s clear that budget issues will dominate the early part of this session, with uncertainty in Washington threatening to delay completion of the budget and to extend the legislature well into the spring.

On the first day of the session, Gov. Nathan Deal moved to limit the amount of budget uncertainty.

He proposed to convert the responsibility of issuing the “hospital bed tax” to the Department of Community Health. This would allow lawmakers to sidestep the pledge most Republicans have made to Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes. Instead, lawmakers would be delegating their constitutional authority to unelected bureaucrats.

With such a move, a major current revenue stream of roughly $500 million to the state treasury would be protected. Republicans would get to honor their pledge not to hike taxes, and hospitals would be subject to taxation by a board on which they have no representation.

This is no way to govern.

Legislators are elected to serve the people, not Grover Norquist. But to avoid breaking a pledge to this unelected player, these same legislators are being asked by the governor to surrender their responsibility to board that Deal controls.

Legislators must not abdicate this responsibility.

Republicans who have hard time deciding how to vote must ask this question. If they were in Congress, would they so eagerly vote to give the same powers to President Obama?

That is a question any legislator of either party should ask themselves whenever they’re asked to surrender power from the legislative branch to the executive branch: If they’re giving it up, would they want it to go to their political enemy?

Our political system is like a pendulum. Alliances change. Parties in power change.

But the powers given to government, almost always passed as “temporary” measures, are never again ceded to the people.

Republicans must begin to distance themselves from the inconsistent pronouncements of Norquist of what does and doesn’t constitute a tax (which is often defined by whether or not Norquist was brought in to be part of negotiations or not). They must get back to determining for themselves what constitutes good public policy.

Ducking tough issues and votes by abdicating responsibility entrusted by the people is shameful and a political gimmick Republicans are likely to regret.

To his credit, Norquist has already referred to the governor’s power grab as “a step in the wrong direction.” On this we agree. But this is also time to take on the random nature of Norquist and American Tax Reform’s policies head on.

If Republicans must placate Norquist, then slice a decimal place of the existing bed tax rate. Demand it be called a tax cut. Republicans may be able to sleep well at night if they renew the tax at 1.44 percent of hospital revenue instead of 1.45 percent.

Then they could tell themselves they “cut” taxes. They wouldn’t have to admit they are too feckless to do what Georgians send them to Atlanta to do, and that they allowed appointed bureaucrats to do it for them.

Charlie Harper lives in Atlanta and edits the Peach Pundit political blog.